Tag Archives: Disneyland

I think it’s still considered ranting if I mainly rave about a topic, which is pretty much what I’m going to do about the new parade, “Paint the Night,” and new fireworks show, “Disneyland Forever,” which both recently debuted at Disneyland. These shows were rolled out, along with a new version of “World of Color,” to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the park’s opening. I got to view these two at a cast screening last week and I was impressively surprised.

Walt Disney’s birthday was on December 5th, which also happened to be the day that Disneyland announced the full-blown Frozen overhaul coming to the resort in less than a month. Both of these milestones meant a lot to me, and in maddeningly different ways.

Consider this my scheduled rant as a Disneyland cast member, but I have been seriously considering the chilling similarities between the humans in WALL-E and the humans I encounter more and more at the happiest place on Earth. As a Christian, I try very hard not to judge the motives and other unknown factors that contribute to people needing automated wheelchair assistance in Disneyland and outside of it. HOWEVER, it is becoming more and more difficult for me not to notice how large, yet seemingly otherwise capable, many of these poor folks seem to be. So, is WALL-E a prophetic piece of societal stereotyping?

We just reopened the Alice in Wonderland attraction in Fantasyland, which had been closed for nearly six months, and the reception has been understandably great. Even as CM’s, we don’t know what the heck is really going on while an attraction is down—no matter how much one of our coworkers claims to have heard “backstage.” We all thought Alice was undergoing basic fall-protection work, like It’s A Small World recently received, but they really went all out in updating Alice, much to the surprise and delight of myself and my fellow FL CM’s. (Get used to abbreviations, cause DL is AAT).

Walt Disney Records has begun rolling out their newly created line of collectible CDs entitled Walt Disney Records The Legacy Collection. Starting first with Disney’s The Lion King, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary, 15 new CD sets of classic Disney film and theme park music have been announced to be released through 2015 with hopefully more to be announced in the future.

Full disclosure for those who don’t know—I work at the Happiest Place on Earth. One of my roles there is guest control for Mickey’s Soundsational Parade, which is the parade currently running at Disneyland. It is a cute parade with a “musical celebration” theme tying the floats together. I’ve seen it about 15,000 times now and I have to admit that I still really enjoy it. It’s no Parade of Dreams, but it’s really fun. A few days ago, Disney Parks officially announced that they will be adding a pre-parade float to the Soundsational mix starring Arendelle’s sweethearts, Anna, Elsa and Olaf. Let the madness begin.

Walt Disney World is promoting their annual “Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party” event with a cool new 2D animated short starring Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Goofy, and Donald Duck. Available for viewing on the Disney Parks YouTube channel the short was created by Disney’s Yellow Shoes Creative Group. Check it out after the jump…

Celebrating the opening of Pixar’s Monsters University, the Disney Parks marketing team held a media event last night in Epcot Park at Walt Disney World announcing their new “Monstrous Summer” promotion for Disney’s U.S.-based theme parks. With a giant Mike Wazowski projection on Epcot’s Spaceship Earth geodesic dome, Mike along with Walt Disney World president George Kalogridis made some cool announcements for events happening the summer at both the Walt Disney Resort in Florida and at the Disneyland Resort in California.

Do you like Disney theme parks? Well, this next story should give you something fun to think about. Al Lutz, who runs the Disney watchdog and fan site MiceAge.com reported in his “MiceAge Update” column on Tuesday that Disney is “seriously considering” building a Monsters, Inc. roller coaster thrill ride in the Disney California Adventure park , which is located adjacent to Disneyland park in Anaheim, California. Lutz also reported in the same article that a Tron-based attraction “is quickly nearing a green light” for the Tomorrowland area of the iconic Disneyland park itself.